With the ongoing expansion of DSL technology, communication services providers have found themselves confronted with the problem that the cost of deployment and maintenance of a DSL circuit may exceed the cost of the DSL equipment itself. A common maintenance issue involves resolving a service-impairing fault that has occurred somewhere along a DSL circuit. To this end, when responding to a DSL trouble call, one or multiple (types of) craftspersons or service technicians may be dispatched to one or more locations along the DSL circuit. For example, a fault occurring within the central office (CO) property will be handled by a CO technician, while a facility technician will be assigned to resolve faults that occur along the cable plant between the central office and the customer site; further, a customer service technician has the responsibility of resolving a problem at the customer premises.
In order to minimize the unwanted expense and delay associated with sending different technicians to different portions of the DSL circuit, it is desirable that the location of the fault be identified prior to dispatching service personnel to correct the problem. Moreover, once a technician has arrived at a potential fault location along the wireline, it may be necessary for the technician to connect and operate expensive test equipment to pinpoint the exact location and type of fault.
Although the telecommunication industry is in the process of developing techniques for detecting types of fault and estimating their location along the DSL circuit, schemes that have been proposed to date are computationally intensive, require dedicated pieces of test equipment and are not readily suited for installation on currently deployed equipment (e.g., DSL line cards).